The Gift of Yesterday
by White Aster
Summary: Skids and Getaway, rust sticks, and memories.


**Notes:** This fic was written for Mighty_grifo as part of the TformersGiftExchange2014 on Tumblr! Merry holidays! Many thanks to Zora for the beta, and all possible plot snafus and canon divergences are totally my fault! :)

This fic has **SPOILERS** through about More Than Meets The Eye #21ish.

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><p>"<em>Merry Christmas!<em>"

Getaway barely recognized the sounds as words in some language he didn't know before something dropped down onto the table in front of him (a closed Tastee-Crunch rust stick box, 0.230 by 0.225 by 0.16 mechnometers) and a much more familiar frame dropped into the seat beside him.

Getaway eyed the box, then looked up at Skids. "What's a _merry christmas_? And those aren't original, are they?"

"Oh, Primus, no, if I had an original Tastee left, I'd sell it and retire to a life of luxury on a pretty moon somewhere." Skids drank deeply from his fizzy energon drink (Getaway thought it looked like a Tank Cleaner, according to the helpfully illustrated menu behind the bar, though Getaway had watched Swerve make four Tank Cleaners since he'd arrived on the _Lost Light_, and they'd ranged from bubbly purple to foamy green). "And I have no idea what a merry christmas is. It's a tradition. Holiday thing. Something from that Earth planet that some of the mechs onboard were stationed on." He waved his hand at the box. "You say _Merry Christmas!_ and give each other gifts."

"Why?" Not that Getaway was above taking surprise gifts. He broke the seal and yeah, the sticks looked ok but slightly misshapen in that way that the homemade kind always were. The recipe wasn't hard for mechs to replicate, but getting it to the right temperature for the right amount of time and then extruding it into the thin, multilayered, perfectly straight sticks that mass production had managed was something no one had time or resources for nowadays. He crunched down on one (not bad...not bad at all) as Skids shrugged.

"Dunno. Tradition. Like Last Night Festival, I guess." Skids eagerly watched him crunch away. "They good?"

"Mmmhmm. Thanks." And they were. It had been a long time, so they could have been terrible and still tasted good. Tyrest hadn't exactly been one to give sweets to his prisoners, and even before that, he and Skids had been a long time in the wilds of space, where they were lucky to get drinkable energon out of their cranky old portable refinery, let alone meet anyone who had treats for sale.

Skids beamed as if Getaway had just told him he'd won something. "Great! I'm glad."

Getaway felt the sweet grit melt as it warmed. He smiled ruefully. "Don't have anything to give you back, unless you want an extra ration cube. My subspace is kinda empty these days." Actually empty, to be honest, except for that extra ration cube. Tyrest also hadn't been one to let renowned escape artists keep the contents of their subspace, more's the pity.

Skids waved a magnanimous hand, all while eyeing the sticks. "That's quite all right."

_Some things never change,_ Getaway thought. But then, the nudge gun hadn't changed who Skids was, only destroyed his memories. Turned back the clock a bit. All of his personality and habits were still there, including his annoying habit of being a good-natured, greedy glitch.

Getaway nudged the rust stick package toward Skids and watched in amusement as Skids had one of the sweets in his mouth before he could finish saying, "ohsuredon'tmindifIdo,mmmsgood..."

It was strange, though, seeing that ghost of his partner (ex-partner?) sitting there, crunching on a rust stick and not remembering him. Though it was much better than several of the alternatives, that was for sure. He'd thought that Skids had gotten away clean, but he'd never been sure. He'd chosen to believe Skids was alive, but he'd not KNOWN.

When Skids rummaged around in his subspace again, Getaway almost expected another "gift" for sharing, but instead, Skids pulled out a...bolt.

Not just any bolt. An A3 mounting bolt. THAT bolt.

"Oh Primus on a piston," Getaway huffed, smiling behind his mask as he picked up the bolt. Corroded, stripped piece of slag that it was. "Didn't know you had this."

"Found that in my subspace," Skids said. "Don't remember it, of course, but it... I..." He grimaced. "It makes me feel like laughing when I look at it. It's important. I just don't know why." He held Getaway's optics. "I was hoping you could tell me."

It had been their first comedy of errors on the Tyrest mission, having to survive the piece-of-slag ship that Prowl had provided, which, lightyears from anywhere, started shaking itself nearly to pieces. Nearly every stripped mounting bolt on the engine's field generator had started working itself loose and clattering to the floor Two panicked Cybertronians had had to scramble to find fasteners before the entire component worked itself out of alignment and blew their engine, ship, and themselves to the Well. Getaway remembered it ALL too well.

"Sure," Getaway said, slowly. "I can tell you that. I can tell you everything, if you want." It was against protocol. Prowl would definitely not approve, though Getaway found that after the complete and utter trainwreck of that last mission, he really, really didn't care. He'd help out his partner before Prowl, anyday. "I just didn't know...if you wanted to know. I mean...you seem to have made a fresh start here. Thought maybe you wanted to leave all the things you forgot behind. It's not like they matter, now."

"Of course they do." Skids' voice was a lot more confident than Getaway expected, his optics narrowed. "It's not like I don't have the feelings still. I just don't remember what caused them. I don't know why this thing-" he nudged the bolt "-is important, or why I like you so much, or why...well, a lot of things. And I want to know. About them. About you. Because I'm still carrying it." He looked at Getaway hard, head cocked. "And we're friends."

"...yeah. We were."

Skids waved a hand. "Nah nah nah, none of this 'were' crap." Skids gestured at the two of them as he stood up. "We're friends. So you sit here, and I'll go get us drinks, and then you can tell me all our stories."

Getaway found himself smiling behind his faceplate. "...okay. So long as you tell me about what I've missed on this ship. Something about a sparkeater? And Overlord?"

"Ahaha, yeah, good times, and by good I mean terrifying."

"Aren't they always?" Getaway murmured as Skids headed to the bar and ordered more drinks ("Something red and something green! Unless you can make something red-and-green? That would be awesome!")

Getaway picked up the bolt again, watching the play of light over the cheap, scarred metal as it rolled in his palm. _Aren't they always._

Eventually, Skids came back with disgustingly red-and-green-swirled high grade, and Getaway talked and talked as the rust sticks slowly disappeared between them.


End file.
